Northstar Vale not with a bang, but with a whimper

As time dragged on and Sable Redhawk developed cognition, he became aware of many things.

Vibrating in the air from sound. The touch of his mother’s tongue across his crown. The warmth he leeched from his sister. He was unaware in all of this that he’d yet to make a sound, nor had Towhee Jr.

Today that changed.

In the early hours of afternoon, a rasping, wheezy whine left the neonatal boy. He’d gotten turned around in his nosing, and ended up far from the warmth of Towhee and Towhee Jr.

It was there, in the cold, that he learned loneliness, if only for a second